"I've done it in the world championships one time before. It's not that I think it looks good, but I had to try something," said Alfredsson after the Senators' 2-1 win last night to stave off elimination in their Eastern Conference semi-final.

The captain looked more like his old self last night, at least from a distance. He's still stuck on one goal for the playoffs, but he tied for the team lead in shots last night and had another two miss the target, including a great chance on a short-handed 2-on-1.

"The big thing is we have to keep thinking about the positives and think about what we can accomplish as a team," he said."I thought we did a great job sticking together as a group today. Everybody showed that they really wanted this tonight.

"We had that in some other games, too, but didn't get the result we wanted. Keep going this way and we're going to give ourselves a chance to win the next game as well."

Sabres defenceman Jay McKee said his team was done in by a slow first period.

"You need to play 60 minutes at this time of year, especially against a team like that," said McKee. "You can't take 20 minutes off or even one shift or you'll wind up behind the 8-ball. We didn't have the jump they did."